In the spirit of many great architects of the past, from Palladio and John Soane to Le Corbusier and Cedric Price, The Architecture Drawing Prize is an ideal platform for reflecting on and exploring how drawing continues to advance the art of architecture today. It embraces the creative use of digital tools and digitally produced renderings, while recognizing the enduring importance of hand drawing. The organizers invite entries of all types and forms: from technical or construction drawings to cutaway or perspective views – and anything in between.
Entries are welcomed by architects, designers and especially students from around the world in the following categories: hand-drawn, digital, and hybrid, combining the two. This year also sees the introduction of a new category: the detail drawing, to support entries by architects with a passion for working details. Submissions across the four categories will be evaluated on the basis of their technical skill, originality in approach and ability to convey an architectural idea. Drawings can be entirely speculative or relate to real projects.
This year’s judges include artists Langlands and Bell (Ben Langlands and Nikki Bell); Ken Shuttleworth (Make Architects); Narinder Sagoo (Foster + Partners); Jeremy Melvin (World Architecture Festival); Owen Hopkins (Sir John Soane’s Museum London) plus Manuelle Gautrand (Manuelle Gautrand Architecture); Christian Schittich (DETAIL) and Gary Simmons (William Hare Group).
The winners and shortlist will be announced in October, and then go on display at a dedicated exhibition at the Sir John Soane's Museum in London in January 2020. The category winners will each receive a delegate pass and two nights in a hotel during the World Architecture Festival in Amsterdam, 4-6 December 2019. They will be invited to participate in an event on the Festival Stage at WAF, and receive tickets to the Gala Dinner.
In 2018 the prize attracted entries from 31 countries across the globe, showing the truly international nature of the prize. Of the entrants, 55% were architects, 12% were designers and 33% were students. Over fifty percent of entries, and over sixty percent of the shortlisted entries were submitted by entrants aged 30 and under. To encourage this trend into 2019, the organizers continue to offer a reduced entry fee of £55 for all entries by students and those under 30, a reduction from the standard fee of £165.
The second annual Architecture Drawing Prize in 2018 went to Li Han, one of the founding partners of Drawing Architecture Studio in Beijing, for his work entitled ‘The Samsara of Building No. 42 on Dirty Street’. Judges commended him for challenging preconceptions of digital presentation, creating a modern day Archigram drawing but also a step into the future. The winner of the inaugural prize in 2017 went to Jerome Xin Hao Ng for ‘Momento Mori: a Peckham Hospice Care Home by Jerome Xin Hao Ng’, which was praised for its technical skill and the way in which it demonstrates the settings for multi-generation social interaction
